Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday August 11, 2009 @12:16PM
from the professional-envy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association and the MPAA's Canadian
subsidiary are demanding
that Canada adopt copyright laws that go beyond even the DMCA. The
groups demand anti-circumvention law, three strikes and you're out
legislation, and increased secondary liability for websites. The
demands come as part of the national copyright
consultation in which hundreds of Canadians have spoken out against such
reforms."

Yeah I know. I want frikken Lollipop trees on ever road side and fountains of chocolate syrup on every corner.

What other businesses have such amazing legislation supporting their business models? Almost all legislation is written to prevent "business models" from abusing the public. This is quite the opposite.

Not an employer, more like a subcontractor. They are enlisted by artists to "handle" the royalties on their behalf. If the CRIA disappeared today, artists would still be pretty much in the same place. The big guys would be pissed, but they're free to hire their own 1st-tier droogs. The small guys probably wouldn't notice a thing.

So what we have is the average Canadian, thinking their government should do one thing, and a few vested parties (with A LOT of $$$) disagreeing. I know how this plays out on this side of the border, but will Canadian govt actually listen to it's people? Eh?
Greg

Not with Harper in power. He likes to roll over and play dead for anything corporate. Fortunately its a minority and the senate is still there to protect the interests of the people of Canada. On a side note, I haven't seen anything from CBC so I don't know how many Canadians actually know this is happening. If I am wrong it would be nice to see a link to the article.

The Liberals are at the same corporate trough as the Conservatives.Remember Paul Martain? Do you remember him, our former prime-minster? The one who didn't want to pay Canadian taxes on his ships so he registered them outside the country and staffed them all with foreign workers, yet still called his shipping company 'Canadian Shipping'. Do you remember him? Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur? The Liberals have ZERO problem with enacting the same laws.

If you want a leader who's against new copyright laws you have to look to the ones who're anti-american like the Bloc, and the NDP, or Green.

Listen, can't we all just recognize that all parties are completely inept? I mean the NDP would be happy taxing us to death for the poor, the downtrodden, whatever, I can't vote for the Bloc out here in BC (even though I would -- just to see what happened) and the green party is nothing but conservatives dressed in green - I like none of their policies. The liberals are a bunch of wankers who can't seem to get any sort of cohesion, and the conservatives are fucking nuts.

Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur?

Actually, this was a godsend in disguise, because it essentially created a giant loophole for Bittorrent operators in Canada. The CRIA hasn't been nearly as successful as their American counterpart because infringing citizens can happily point to the levy and say, "You're already getting your cut, so STFU."

Uh, the Senate? Stop legislation in Canada? I don't think so. I can recall only a single time in the past 30 years when they DELAYED some legislation briefly (a month or two).

And I hope they can stop this legislation, because right after it, the media companies will immediately go to Congress and demand changes in copyright law to match or exceed that in Canada, "just to give US companies equal protection".

The Liberals are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the polls and are looking for an issue to galvanize the elusive 18-35 year old citizens into voting.

If only there was something contentious, like making it illegal to copy legally purchased materials or record TV. Something like "You could go to jail or face $20,000 for owning a modded XBox." Telling young professionals that content will be decided not by the CRTC, but by cable providers and American lobby groups. If you buy a DVD for your kids and let them use a ripped copy to skip the ads and keep the copy clean, that's a violation of WIPO, which could jail you and bankrupt you. Using any operating system that bypasses security features would do the same, too.

If only there was a way to contact your local Liberal [liberal.ca], Bloq [blocquebecois.org], and NDP [www.ndp.ca] MPs and let them know how you, as a citizen and registered voter, think this is worth an election.

Imagine the ads:Have a guy walking down the street, listening to an MP3 player. A van pulls up next to him, and RCMP with guns order him to the ground. One policeman grabs the player, looks through it, says, "full of mp3s" to another one. They arrest him and put him in the van.

I'd be willing to go so far as to say C-60 was written by people who had no idea what they were writing. That's really our fault for not letting our MPs know that we're available for technical consultation. When lobbyists show up with dozens of clippings about "copyright violations cost $TRILLIONS OMG!!!" and tell them that "consumers demand protection against stolen goods" they will listen. If we're not telling them, "we like our existing laws, and we want to own our o

Here, we will find out if Canadians have more balls than us Americans who live south of the 49th parallel. Hopefully, the Canucks will tell them all to eat shit, and that will give the voters in the states a little motivation to get off THEIR dead asses to protest.

By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article: The Great American Bubble Machine [rollingstone.com]. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)

The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just o

that's quite a different matter from getting buy-in from the citizenry. they won't follow really bad laws.

in the US, we already ignore copyright (many of us do) as a way of protesting the current status quo.

civil disobedience works and is justified here. ignore any bad laws passed. they don't apply to you. they were corrupt and so are null and void. use your own good common sense! the understanding of what's right and wrong is inside you; you don't need to look at BOUGHT AND PAID FOR laws for your morality.

once the media industry decided to play fair, we'll take off the mitts and also play fair. until then, its lawlessness. on both sides.

The RIAA/MPAA is not interested in attacking every single copyright violator. They are only interested in making extreme examples of a handful of unlucky people to warn everyone else. Is it working? You betcha! I think twice before I download anything now. I don't have $3000 to settle with, I sure as hell don't have $1.5 million to lose in court, and I have no desire to ruin my wife and I's spotless and good credit history by going through bankruptcy.

Their fear campaign is indeed working on me. Regardless of the fact that they have not gone after anyone for downloading yet, they still have the ability. My risk assessment has determined that the risk is not worth it. I have busted my ass for years to get where I am and now I'm busting my ass trying to secure my family's future. I can not afford having that all come crashing down. Note that if you use torrents, you are almost certainly sharing, even if you are only sharing a small piece of the complete puzzle. It amuses me that I can afford the cost of getting caught putting people's lives at risk by speeding in my car, but I can't afford the cost of getting caught sharing music.

Nope. But send a few juicy targets off to the state pen and the rest will learn to keep their heads down. If a country makes a fairly minor crime a hanging offense, that first guy swinging from the gallows is a great message to any possible second. Laws aren't just punishments, they're also deterrents.

That really doesn't work, though. Laws as deterrents are only effective if the risk of getting caught is high. It's far too easy to almost completely eliminate that risk, and thus, using copyright law in this way is doomed to failure.

All the P2P clients would have to do to seriously frustrate attempts at assigning liability is design P2P clients to take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor provision for caching servers. If clients lie about the available peers and proxy requests for files that they don't ha

Speeding tickets and most other vehicular-related offenses are just a revenue grab for the ticket-writing jurisdiction. They are intended not to really deter behavior, just to allow the jurisdiction to shake people down for money. If you wanted to deter routine 10-over speeding, running red lights, and violating parking regulations (three of the biggest revenue-grabbing charges), you would have penalties similar to that of DWIs and attempted vehicular homicide/reckless endangerment. Those have serious conse

Everybody who does those doesn't get punished (the original poster mentioned jail time but I'll let that slide as you can go to jail for excessive speeding), and your example is a perfect one to illustrate the opposite point: despite the possibility of jail time TONS of people still do those things you mentioned. The fact that some paid of politician in a suit passed a law hasn't stopped people.

No matter what laws you pass people will still end up breaking them if they don't agree with the law in the first

civil disobedience works and is justified here. ignore any bad laws passed. they don't apply to you. they were corrupt and so are null and void. use your own good common sense! the understanding of what's right and wrong is inside you; you don't need to look at BOUGHT AND PAID FOR laws for your morality.

once the media industry decided to play fair, we'll take off the mitts and also play fair. until then, its lawlessness. on both sides.

(emphasis mine) I think you nailed it. Unfortunately, "[any bad laws] don't apply to you" is a quick trip to anarchy. The RIAA and the other groups have no power without the government intervening on their behalf. Which is another in a long list of arguments for small government with limited power, positioned just barely to the left of anarchy.

Perhaps not, but those that do are raising hell as loudly as they can...
Remember when they wanted to add the blank media tax for "piracy"? Some stores like Staples refused to do it (or at least, media prices did not change).

People very rarely say "Oh look, I'm ignorant about an important issue! Oh no!" They need to realize it's important first... right?:)
In this case, it's a very new technology, and debates like this aren't of much interest outside geek circles. Clearly those of us who are concerned do what we can to raise awareness, but in a lot of ways it's still a very new issue, and it takes a while for things like this to reach the public awareness.

In this case, it's a very new technology, and debates like this aren't of much interest outside geek circles.

When most modern means of control are at least related to technology, perhaps the average person needs to question whether it is in their interests to leave such matters to "geek circles." The amount of effort needed to have at least a familiarity with these issues is nearly trivial; there is no need to become an expert in anything in order to understand that this is a bid for power that should rig

Not to mention that people need to rely on the media to inform them of what is going on (this is just a reasonable expectation that most people don't have the time to research everything that is going on in the government). This is one thing that the media is definitely going to either keep quiet about or be openly on the side of the recording and movie industry

Not to mention that people need to rely on the media to inform them of what is going on (this is just a reasonable expectation that most people don't have the time to research everything that is going on in the government). This is one thing that the media is definitely going to either keep quiet about or be openly on the side of the recording and movie industry

The media's job is so important that if they fail to carry it out, it's up to us. Maybe that means a couple fewer TV shows that you watch or a ball game you don't attend so you can do a little research. The Internet makes this possible, but it won't do the job for you; you have to actually engage yourself. That's such a tiny price to pay to have such an important job taken care of. If the will were there, it would get taken care of one way or another. When it comes down to it, most of us don't think it

The "new technology" aspect of it really has squat to do with it. Also,these changes in favor of the labels have been going on for quite a longtime. Infact, the more relevant aspects of the recent legislative changesdon't even have anything do to do with "new gadgets".

Things like "Catcher in the Rye" and "Happy Birthday" are far more pressing.

In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues. Copyright is another matter. Canada has been staggering backwards for quite some time on that issue. Net Neutrality is threatening to everyone but the ISPs that stand to profit from it, Copyright is a much uglier matter.
It's been a long time since I heard anyone say "but we pay tax on blank cds, it's okay to copy here! We already had this fight over tapes decades ago!" The way things are going I guess we just pay that tax for the hell of it.

It's been a long time since I heard anyone say "but we pay tax on blank cds, it's okay to copy here! We already had this fight over tapes decades ago!" The way things are going I guess we just pay that tax for the hell of it.

Well, in all fairness, the general direction is going towards mp3 players. Canada, currently, does not have a tax on MP3 players, only tapes & CDs. We need to either start taxing mp3 players again or we really do have to give up the "but we pay tax on blank cds" argument.

"In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues."

Yeah, like when the FCC told Comcast to knock it off with messing with people's Bittorrent.

Oh, wait - that happened under the Bush administration. Well, I'm sure Obama has done plenty since his inauguration...[searches Google]...Hmmm, I see a whole page of hits on his campaign promises.

Well, that's fine - everyone knows that he will fulfill all of his campaign promises.

For some reason people think that the identity of the President is more important than who finances him so he can get into office. If you take a moment to make even a cursory study of it, you'll find one "odd" thing: many of the interests, particularly bankers, who financially supported Obama also supported his Republican opponent. Why, it's almost as though they don't care who wins as long as it's a major-party candidate...

The modern two-party duopoly serves the same purpose as the trade guilds of ol

A friend of mine said once that the global corporations, by nature of the vast resources they control, actually formulate government policy and the elected politicians are the ones tasked with selling those policies to the public. There are minor exceptions such as privatizing Social Security in Bush II's second term in which public opposition is too strong to put through the policy, but these are few and far between.

In the case of the DMCA, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The problem is that the politicians have had difficulty selling the idea to Canadians at large, and prioritizing it in a minority government.

With the comment submission process, the elites can make the already formulated policies more palatable to Canadians. Perhaps there will be a few minor compromises. But in the end, they'll get what they want once they find the right "marketing" formula.

Personally, I find the idea that my internet access could be cut off after three false accusations of piracy to be frightening. I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.

the next time you produce a movie why don't you just keep it locked in your vaults and don't let anyone touch it or see it, then nobody will be able to copy/download/upload or pirate it. if someone can see it you can bet they will find a way to make a copy to either share freely or to sell on the black market. and even those that technically don't know how to do it will just get one of those copies so in the long run you are wasting your time and money...

those that just want to go to the theater will go anyway even if it is available free because they can go with friends & family or on a romantic date and enjoy the show (popcorn and sodapop too) and you still get your billions in return for your investment, so please quit acting like a paranoid selfish kid afraid that somebody is going to take a piece of your candy...

The CRTC just finished net neutrality hearings with pretty much every major ISP involved. Their decision I believe is still pending, but no law, statement, or otherwise has ever been made that deems Broadband an essential service.

If it were an essential service, there would be much more strict regulation in place, ISP's would not be allowed to throttle service, and We would be *MUCH* happier with broadband in Canada.

I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.

Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com [riaa.com] only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.

At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000... per day.

I demand that my members of parliament, regardless of party affiliation, stand up to these greed-interested lobby groups and champion the best interests of the people they serve - the people who elected them to their positions.

As a voting Canadian, I assure the people in power that I do have influence over their job security should my demands not be met. Given that I am confident that my demands are not dissimilar to the demands of other Canadians, I would strongly suggest that the decision-makers of Canada pay close attention to my demands lest they find themselves out of work and replaced with someone who _is_ willing to represent the best interests of the people of my great nation.

Further, I, as a proud Canadian, demand that lobby groups that do not serve the best interests of the people of my great nation fuck the hell off.

The MPAA/RIAA/etc gets their draconian copyright laws but with two modifications:

1) When the copyright on a work expires, they are required to publish a high quality public domain version of the work in a well-documented format. (e.g. a high bitrate MP3 or lossless FLAC for audio. MPEG-2 for video.)

The MPAA/RIAA/etc gets their draconian copyright laws but with two modifications:

1) When the copyright on a work expires, they are required to publish a high quality public domain version of the work in a well-documented format. (e.g. a high bitrate MP3 or lossless FLAC for audio. MPEG-2 for video.)

2) Copyright terms will be shortened to 5 years.

I would gladly support this. I would wear a tiara and a ballerina outfit on main street if it meant we got this.

We now have fantastic communication access to our fellow humans. We also have access to awesome creative tools that allow us to express ourselves graphically and aurally. Thanks to the BSD and GNU people we have free creative tools and the tools to create those tools.

It seems to me that the vital battles over the Internet center on reasonable access to bandwidth--not bandwidth for receiving data from the Cloud, but bandwidth for uploading and receiving content to and from the World.

Write your MP, phone him (long distance rates are TOO cheap).Do the same to the Prime MinisterLocate them here [parl.gc.ca].Write your newspaper. Sign up in the consultation.Talk to others who care.

Be respectful and clear. Here are some potential talking points:1. The levy should be enough.2. Ordinary citizens keep opposing this, don't keep re-introducing it.3. If a politician wants to reverse alienation of young voters, come out vocally against bills like this.

I did attempt to submit this as a story a year ago. Didn't make the cut:

rbrander writes "Canadian copyright watchdog Michael Geist has written the story of How the U.S. got its Canadian copyright bill". The arm-twisting was pretty up-front: "Canadian officials arrived ready to talk about a series of economic concerns but were quickly rebuffed by their U.S. counterparts, who indicated that progress on other issues would depend upon action on the copyright file."... "the USTR...made veiled threats about 'thickening the border' between Canada and the U.S. if Canada refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda."

So, bottom line: It isn't the industry telling a nation of 30M people what to do, it's an industry saying "We pull strings and US trade negotiators dance the mamba for us. Do as you're told or they'll dance that mamba all over your timber, cattle, grain, and steel sales to a trading partner 10X your size."

Not many people know that Canada is the US' largest trading partner: much larger than China, larger than China and Britain combined. But the converse is staggering: the US is 80% of our TOTAL world trade. When the US negotiators hit the table saying "No discussion of of all our trade issues about the big-ticket items until you cave on the little wee Intellectual Property issue", the Canadian government has very little choice but to comply. That goes across party lines.

Any law that makes every citizen of the country a criminal is pointless and unenforceable.

I'm always amazed at the industry spokespeople, and often wonder what planet they are from, because they
certainly aren't from the same planet I'm from.

It's not just copyright. We have a concerted lobbying campaign going on by the car dealers
claiming that privately imported vehicles are the enemy of all that is free and right and holy
and will cause the end of civilization as we know it,
even though the sales of such vehicles are much smaller than, say, Lexus. They have a particular bee in their
collective
bonnet about right-hand drive vehicles, since these are the most obvious imports.

America hasn't "made us do" any of these things. Our trade ministers and premiers are the ones to blame. We've had a really bad run of crooked bastards over the past decade, and the problem stems from the fact that we have a rapidly expanding Albertan market that's got more in common with southern States than a Canadian provinces, and it just so happens that their own mini Bush is the guy calling the shots here in Ottawa.

If we had leaders with even average-sized balls, they could put a foot down and shift the trade relationships back in our favor - or simply cut the off and see what (doesn't) happen. War ? I can't even type that word without chuckling... The only reason our industries are being exploited is because our leaders set it up that way, under presumed ulterior motives. There's no need to blame the Americans.

So you'd rather just blame Alberta? Please. While the conservatives have their strongest support here, they were voted for throughout Canada, and that includes Ontario. Turning this into an "east versus west" debate is the most petty kind of political bickering and brings absolutely nothing to the table.

So please, take your blind, idiotic regionalism and kindly shove it up your ass. And that goes for everyone, "easterners" and "westerners" alike.

Exactly. Here in Alberta we did have little guy with big balls. Say what you will about the man, but Ralph Klein basically told the Americans to go fuck themselves. America wanted special deals in the tar sands but one of Ralph's last duties in office was to sign a huge trade deal with China, much to the chagrin of Bush & co. America was not going to screw us over anymore.

Does America wanna start something over oil? I bet the Chinese would step in. Ralph was way smarter than he looked... I miss the li

Oh, and if you defend their position, you are ultimately working for their cause. Even if you're just stating their position (and thereby promote it).

No, that is not the way discourse works. Just because you don't agree with them, doesn't mean that no one should hear what they have to say. And don't go trying to twist my words around into something that you and I both no I don't mean. My point is that there is a time and a place for debate, attempting to silence or stifle one side of the debate, during that time, is not acceptable.

That doesn't mean that creationism should be taught in schools; it means that if someone on the board argues that it shoul

Why is this moderated "Troll?" The OP is correct. The companies are trying to reclassify an activity that has been legal (either truly a right retained by the people or so seldom enforced it is a right by default) to make it a criminal (or severly punished civil) act.

Who gives convicted sex offenders (by the letter of the law) the time of day to argue the appropriateness of the law that places them under that classification. Copyright offenders (under the new law) will be written off as well as people sim